A return to an old plot point. I was searching through my folders and drives and such, and I found something that I originally wrote a pretty long while ago. There was some pretty good stuff in it, so I decided to brush it up and show it to you.
This is a chapter dealing with the "Gambit Cycle," but it doesn't quite fit with the other two (Chapters 40 and 54, I mean) in a couple of smaller details.
For the most part, though, I think it's fine.
1.
"Hey, did you see that infographic Kaiba-Corp put out to 'celebrate' Gambit?"
Joey Wheeler didn't like to think of himself as a negative person. He liked to think of himself as the opposite of a negative person, which he'd heard was called positive. Now, he understood how retail work . . . worked, and why it was important to smile while you were on the phone with a customer because it changed the way your voice sounded, and made you seem more inviting, and willing to help.
Smiling was battle armor for people working in retail.
Currently, Joey looked like he was actively chewing glass. While Yugi watched, looking rightfully nervous, the blond stared down at his knuckles like he was searching for a spot on which to tattoo a new conquest.
"If each sword in the Sentinels' arsenal was placed end to end, it would reach the moon and back seventeen thousand times!"
"Yeah, now if only they'd tell us how many of those swords were held by actual players, instead of bots. Oh, wait. There aren't any actual players!"
"Seriously. I can't believe people still play that piece of shit. Maybe if they'd spent time working on it instead of putting out juvenile crap like this . . ."
"Joey," Yugi said, preemptively reasoning with a tropical storm, "could you do me a favor and check the stockroom? Grandpa wanted to know if the new issue of Moon Theme came in, and if it just got misplaced."
Joey raised a slow eyebrow at his friend. "Uh-huh. Found it this mornin'. Ain't due out 'til tomorrow. Yugi, I swear to fucking hell if I hear one more word about that motherfucking game I'm gonna eat somebody's skull."
He was heard. Not that this was a surprise; Joey was not a quiet person. He was the opposite of that, too. One of the Unnamed Ones looked at him. "Hey, sorry, man. I know what you mean. It's freaking awful, isn't it?"
"Who the fuck asked you to talk?!" Joey snarled through clenched teeth. The two customers, currently embroiled over a tabletop miniatures game, both stared openly at him; they were semi-regulars, and knew Joey as a companionable sort. They had never seen him mildly annoyed, much less enraptured with fury like he was now.
". . . Jesus, dude, sorry."
"No. No, you know what? You're not sorry. None of you fucktards are goddamn sorry. I've had enough of this bullshit. I've been holding this in for goddamn months and I'm sick of it!" The pair looked at each other, then started to stand up. " You'll sit there and listen to this, you sniveling shits !"
"Joey, enough. Stop it. Knock it off !"
Joey leveled a glare on his best friend that would have scared off a feral bear, and Yugi was suddenly reminded of a time when he'd looked at this young man with terror instead of fondness.
"Pop quiz, dipshits. Who's the Chief Creative Director for Gambit?" Joey asked.
The pair looked at each other again. One eventually said, ". . . Mokuba Kaiba."
"S'right. Know how old he is?"
"Like, ten?"
"Close enough. You feel good about yourselves? I wanna know. I seriously wanna know the answer to this, because it's been bafflin' me for a good while now. There's people like you two all over the fuckin' internet, bitching and raving and slavering about how awful this or that thing is, it's a travesty, it's insulting, it's a piece of shit and I wouldn't buy it if you threatened me. Does that validate you or something? Does it make you tingle in the right places? Or are you just so knee-deep in your own shit that you don't notice the smell anymore?"
"Look, man, I don't know what the hell your problem is, but that game fucking sucks, okay?"
"No. Not okay."
"Hey. Joey. Your name's Joey, right? Maybe you like the game or whatever. That's all good. But you have to acknowledge there's plenty of us that don't. There's a lot of us that don't. A lot of us were seriously disappointed."
Joey's lip curled. "Ever heard about that old idea of what to do when you can't say somethin' nice? Keep your fuckin' trap shut. Talk with your wallet. This smear campaign that's been going on ever since launch night makes me sick."
"We have a right to—"
"Fuck your rights!" Joey almost vaulted over the counter. "Do you know something? After this game launches, and you guys throw your bitch fits like fucking two-year-olds, Mokuba Kaiba, what he does is, he holds a press conference. He has people ask questions. Lets their concerns be heard. Then you know what he does later, when you're still not satisfied? He tells everybody that the feedback KC's been getting on the game so far has taught him something: he's not ready for this. He's not cut out for this, and he's stepping down from his position at Kaiba-Corp. The motherfucking vice president of the Kaiba Corporation fucking resigned because of this game. Says that if anybody has anything bad to say about this game, his game, then he's the one to blame for it. So, he says, he's gonna take responsibility for it."
Something dawned in Yugi's eyes, and the pair of customers suddenly looked less sure of themselves.
Joey grimaced. "I know that kid. That kid's my friend. I've never met a happier, friendlier, more dedicated little bastard in my life. He put his fucking soul into this game, and people like you just took a big old shit right on it. Talking about how you're disappointed. You still fucking bought it! And you wanna talk about rights? Do you know that people cheered when Mokuba said he was quitting? That he was goin' back to speeches 'n presentations, symbolic shit, and that his new job over at KC Kairos was going to somebody else?"
The silence that followed was the eye of the storm.
The bell above the front door rang.
"THEY FUCKING CHEERED!" Joey screeched, launching a display of trading cards and booster packs into the air with a furious sweep of his arm. "That kid's career might be ruined, at an age when most of us can't figure out how to wipe ourselves, and you little fucks wanna make jokes about it? How 'bout this for a joke? You like jokes? How 'bout this one? Get the fuck out. Right now. Pick up your shit, go out to the parking lot and get in your car, and drive it off a fucking bridge."
". . . Wheeler. That's enough."
Joey went stiff; so did the customers.
Seto Kaiba stood in the shop, his brother standing beside him; both Kaibas' faces were forcibly neutral. The two gamers at the table, faced with the direct objects of their ire just moments before, suddenly found themselves speechless. They went pale as bed-sheets.
Joey stared at Seto for a long while before turning away and stalking off into another room.
2.
"I'm really sorry about all this," Yugi said while he rang up his customers' purchases. "He's not usually like that. So unprofessional. He shouldn't have talked to you like that." Yugi smiled. "I shaved off twenty-five percent for your trouble. If you decide you don't want to come around here anymore, I understand. May I recommend the Black Crown, over on the other side of town? I hear the owner's putting on a Dungeon Dice Monsters tournament starting next Monday."
He was rambling. He knew he was rambling, but at this point he didn't care.
Yugi didn't breathe again until they were gone, and he was alone in the room with the Kaiba brothers. Mokuba was sitting at the same table where Joey's latest eternal enemies had been seated, looking at a role-playing book without actually reading anything.
Seto stood off in a corner, looking at promotional posters.
Eventually, Mokuba spoke. ". . . I wondered if anybody I knew actually watched that conference."
Yugi chuckled nervously. "I'm not sure if anybody's told you this, probably they must have, but it took a lot of courage to do what you did. You know that, right? I couldn't have done it. Not in public. Probably not in private. I'd have just . . . run away."
"I wanted to," Mokuba mumbled, and Yugi nearly panicked when he noticed that the boy's eyes were wet.
Seto's phone rang, and he strode outside with it. Mokuba watched his brother go, chewing at his lower lip as he did, and Yugi wondered what could possibly be going through the young Kaiba's mind.
"You know how I make videos on YouTube?" Mokuba asked eventually, with a wispy sort of voice. Yugi nodded. "Some people I know, they're kind of like my . . . crew, I guess. We're kind of a team. They're all playing Gambit now. Sort of like a protest."
Yugi smiled. Mokuba smiled in turn.
"You and your team made a great game, Mokuba," Yugi said. "It just feels like gamers have gotten so spoiled that they forget how hard it is to make something like that, and their expectations get so far ahead of themselves that they're expecting an express ticket straight into Nirvana."
"Niisama's games are revolutionary," Mokuba said. "They paved the way for modern gaming. He invented genres. I thought I could do the same thing. I thought if I just watched real close how he did it, then I could do it, too." He laughed, and it sounded like a sob. "I did. I made something spectacular. The most spectacular failure in Kaiba-Corp's history."
Joey came barreling out of the stock room, stalked to the door, and threw it open.
Mokuba blinked, frowned, then looked at Yugi. "Um . . . ?"
Yugi shrugged.
3.
Seto slipped his phone into his pocket, and turned around to find the spitfire-furious face of Joey Wheeler sitting an inch from his own. "Got a question to ask you, Moneybags," the blond sneered. Seto mused that it had been a long time since Joey had pulled that particular insult out of his bag of tricks; it was almost nostalgic.
". . . Yes?" Seto asked mildly.
"The fuck you been doin' about this? I thought you were supposed to be that kid's big brother. Protect him. That don't just mean from guns 'n bombs, you fuck. Where the hell have you been for this shit-storm?"
There was a dragon in Seto Kaiba. Usually it slept these days, but every so often its eyes opened, and smoke curled out from behind its fangs. That smoke coiled in his eyes, and his voice was dangerous.
". . . Where I must be: away from it." Joey opened his mouth, but Seto cut him off. "This is my brother's career. This isn't school, or an extra-curricular exercise. I can't be a part of this. I had nothing to do with Gambit's development, and I will have nothing to do with anything that happens with it. This is his project, and he has to handle it."
"So what, you're just gonna let people shit on him? C'mon, Kaiba, we're not sixteen anymore! I know you better than that! You can't seriously be hiding behind that crap! It's his job to handle it? Bullshit!"
Seto licked at his lips, something he very rarely did. More so than running his hands through his hair—more even than the twitch above his right eye that happened far more often than Mokuba thought it did—this tiny, innocuous little gesture betrayed that the dragon was not only awake.
It was fuming.
". . . Do you know how many times in the past three months I have dug my fingernails into my palms hard enough to draw blood? How many times I have had to bite through my tongue? How many times I have had to leave my gun in my office because I didn't trust myself to have it within reach of my hand?"
Joey's face slackened, and he took a small step backward.
Seto pointed to the shop. "There. Sitting in there. More depressed and angry than I have ever seen him. That's my boy. My boy! I taught him to walk, Wheeler, do you understand me? The first word he ever spoke was my name. When he told me that he wanted to join me at Kaiba-Corp, and start making games, the first thing I taught him was how to handle backlash, because that's my job. I told him that there would always be angry, entitled, infuriating people who would bitch and moan about every little flaw. The greatest work of art on the face of the planet will have at least one person crying that it isn't good enough, or that it's too good, or that it's a waste of time to like it because everyone likes it."
Joey's scowl returned, but it was softer.
"How would it look, Wheeler, if I stepped in to protect him now? I've stood back, and watched him handle this entire debacle gloriously. Have you ever seen a public figure react to bad press as well as Mokuba has? I will die before I ruin that." Seto looked over Joey's shoulder at the shop again. "When I saw him take the helm on Gambit the way he did, I wanted to cry. When I saw what he and his team created, I did cry. If you think that I haven't wanted to track down every single, solitary whiner who's ever said anything bad about my boy's pet project so that I could rip their faces off, then you haven't been paying attention!"
Silence moved in, weaving a slow circle around them.
Joey stared at his feet, and sighed.
Eventually, he said, ". . . Get older, ya start realizing shit. Like, how it ain't simple anymore. Life. Lessons. All that shit." He shook his head. "Watched you two for years. First I was tryin' to figure out what the fuck was wrong with that kid. Constellations just pop out of his eyes whenever he looks at you. How the fuck's a prick like Kaiba get a kid like that, a smart kid, to idolize him like that?"
Seto crossed his arms, and shifted his weight.
"Then that happened," Joey continued, and Seto didn't need to ask for clarification. "And it started clicking. Look, I dunno what the fuck I'm talkin' about anymore. Point is—you know that anime? Bleach? There's a line in there. Know why big brothers are born first?"
Seto raised a slow eyebrow. "To protect the little brothers and sisters who come after."
Joey's face brightened. "Yeah. That's it. Guess the Moku-man watches that one, huh?" Seto nodded. "Yeah. Some cool shit, right there. Spoke to me, y'know? Like, I'm a big brother. So I guess I got this idea in my head on how big brothers are s'posed to act. Logic don't come into it. The right choices don't come into it. Baby cries, you break someone's face. That's it. But . . . ain't that simple for you guys, is it? Life ain't that simple for you guys. 'Cuz you aren't brothers at all, are you?"
Seto shrugged. "Not really."
"Gotta teach him the right shit. How to act. How to handle shit. Damage control. Can't let the brother genes take over. Gotta be the responsible parent. Gotta be Dad. Right?"
"Yes."
"Yeah. Well. A'right, then. I guess. You, ah . . . know better'n me how to work this shit. God knows my dad couldn't do it, so what the fuck do I know? I'll just keep making a goddamn idiot out of myself. Maybe he'll appreciate the sentiment behind it, huh?"
Seto smirked. "Maybe he will."
As Joey was turning to leave, he stopped and said, "Gotta say, Kaiba . . . your son's a pretty awesome kid."
The smirk softened. "Yes. He is."
4.
"Grandpa's furious," Yugi said, two hours later when he, Joey, and Mokuba were seated at a booth in Big Barney's Grill, waiting for their "gourmand-approved" burgers and endless fries. "Yelling up a storm all around the house. Wanted to fire you for that stunt."
Joey, who had been doing his level best to watch Mokuba without making it obvious that he was watching Mokuba, looked out the window at his right and stared. "Usin' past-tense, talkin' maybes and might've-beens, there, Yug. What stopped him?"
Yugi chuckled. "Mom yelled louder."
"Yeah? Big Mama Mutou layin' down the heat?" Joey chuckled.
"She doesn't really get into the whole electronic entertainment age, y'know? But she's been paying attention to Gambit." Yugi winked at the young Kaiba, who'd been silent for the past half-hour. "She's seen you at the shop. Knows you're one of us. So she wants to know what you've been up to. She told Grandpa . . . she said, 'If you fire Joseph because he was the first person in this city to stand up against the garbage people have been saying about little Mokuba's game, then I'll fire you.' Grandpa tried to say she can't do that, it's his shop, but . . . well. Y'know. How often does that work?"
Joey laughed. "Oughtta make her a gift basket or somethin'." He finally looked directly at his young friend. "Oi. Moku. Don't hold it against me, huh? I'm a fuckin' moron and I don't know when to quit. Didn't mean to embarrass you."
Mokuba sucked in a breath, and it sounded suspiciously like a sniffle.
Joey ruffled the boy's hair and pulled him into a one-armed hug. "We cool?"
Mokuba leaned against the blond and nodded. ". . . Yeah."
Their food arrived, they ate in companionable silence, Mokuba signed an autograph for their server, and the world kept turning.
I'm cultivating a new theory.
Missus Mutou, the mysterious woman responsible for Yugi's birth, has exactly one spoken line in the entire anime, as far as I have seen. Well, I'm pretty sure that she has a lot more to say than that.
Don't be surprised, is what I'm saying, if you start seeing her pop up from time to time.
